It’s clear that the world needs more intellectual humility. But how do we develop this virtue? And why do so many people still end up so arrogant? Do our own biases hold us back from becoming as intellectually humble as we could be—and are there some biases that actually make us more likely to be humble? Which cognitive dispositions and personality traits give people an edge at being more intellectually humble - and are they stable from birth, learned habits, or something in between? And what can contemporary research on the emotions tell us about encouraging intellectual humility in ourselves and others?
Experts in psychology, philosophy and education are conducting exciting new research on these questions, and the results have important, real-world applications. Faced with difficult questions people often tend to dismiss and marginalize dissent. Political and moral disagreements can be incredibly polarizing, and sometimes even dangerous. And whether it’s Christian fundamentalism, Islamic extremism, or militant atheism, religious dialogue remains tinted by arrogance, dogma, and ignorance. The world needs more people who are sensitive to reasons both for and against their beliefs, and are willing to consider the possibility that their political, religious and moral beliefs might be mistaken. The world needs more intellectual humility.
In this course, we will examine the following major questions about the science of intellectual humility:
• How do we become intellectually humble?
• What can human cognition tell us about intellectual humility?
• How does arrogance develop, and how can we become more open-minded?
• How do emotions affect our ability to be intellectually humble?
All lectures are delivered by leading specialists, and the course is organised around a number of interesting readings and practical assignments which will help you address issues related to humility in your daily life.
This course can be taken as a part of a series which explores the theory, the science and the applied issues surrounding intellectual humility. In the previous course on the theory behind intellectual humility, we considered how to define intellectual humility, the nature of an intellectual virtue, and how we know who is intellectually humble. If you are interested, complete all three courses to gain a broader understanding of this fascinating topic. Look for:
• Intellectual Humility: Theory - https://www.coursera.org/learn/intellectual-humility-theory
• Intellectual Humility: Practice - https://www.coursera.org/learn/intellectual-humility-practice

Reviews

ED

I found this course to be very timely in this polarized world. I wish these ideas were taught in school.

KR

Feb 16, 2018

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Well-paced, interesting, informative course. Highly recommend.

From the lesson

What makes us arrogant? Biases, heuristics and cognitive psychology

Professor Frank Keil discusses a number of biases which we all have, and which can make us more arrogant and dogmatic by leading us to think that we know more than we actually do. Can you find examples of those biases in the news, and perhaps even in yourself?

Taught By

Dr. Ian Church

Researcher

Professor Duncan Pritchard

Professor of Philosophy

Dr. Emma Gordon

Postdoctoral Researcher

Transcript

[MUSIC] Now, a different kind of intellectual arrogance can come from developmental considerations. This comes from research showing that in general, young children have a rose-colored bias about their futures. This was initially studied for traits and abilities not for knowledge, and intellectual skills. So for example, if you describe to children a very young child who has shorter than average height or much poorer than average athleticism is quite clumsy or is very messy and then you ask them about their future, what that person would be like when they're grown up, The young children tend to think that the sky's the limit. They think this far below average person can become much taller than average, much more athletic then average or much neater than average. And this effect [COUGH] seems to have a kind of, it's argued to have a potentially adaptive role is called protective optimism. The idea is that young children are so confronted with their failures all the time, because they are often very much at the beginning part of the learning curve that they might give up if they didn't have almost irrational expectations about future success. The idea here is that it protects them from failure and makes them keep persisting when they're doing so badly early on. This kind of developmental overoptimism bias for traits exists across cultures. It's been found in Japan and China, and several other cultures and it declines with age. So, it's much stronger in younger children and we see that in the following graph. So in the classic study along these lines, if you look at this graph and look at the leftmost panel, the five to six year olds. You'll see that when thinking about what an adult will be like who is shorter than average or less athletic average or really messy, they nonetheless think that that person will be extreme positive change. So that yellow bar in the left most panel means that the five and six are also judging that child when they grow up to having very strong positive traits, having switched from being below average to being way above average. By the time they're seven or eight years of age, it's more mixed. Kids tend to think that a person will move to a medium level of competence, average levels of performance. So they'll get much better than being below average, but there won't be a peak performance. But then it changes rather radically with adults. Adults consider the poor individual, who's below average in all these traits to say, stuck in the below average part of the continuum on into adulthood. They see consistency in the traits and not this positive change. So they don't have developmental overoptimism at all, if anything they have almost a pessimism. So, that's for traits and abilities. The question is whether this effect extends to knowledge and could that cause intellectual arrogance? This might be different. It might not be the case that it works for knowledge, given the fact that young children often defer more to adults. So, there's a pretty rich literature showing that young children tend when they hear adults tell them things to agree with what the adults tell them to a larger extent than older children or adults. If they're so deferential, perhaps they're not very optimistic about future knowledge as opposed to they are about future abilities. Well, to test this, we had them engage in a future knowledge task where participants receive ten knowledge items to evaluate about what others might know at age 35 and then also what the self might know at age 35. We also had them evaluate knowledge at age five to look at the contrast. Two items each were asked about in various domains. Knowledge of complex artifacts, knowledge of biological processes. Knowledge of natural phenomena. Knowledge of psychological phenomena and moral knowledge. We did this so as to get a sense of whether this intellectual overoptimism pervaded across all domains or was somehow restricted to some content areas as opposed to others. For complex artifacts, one example would be how much do you think John say, at age 35 will know about the inside parts that make up helicopters and how they work to make helicopters fly? For biological processes, it might be how much do you think that Toni knows when he's 35 about all the parts that make up trees and leaves and how they work to make leaves change colors in the fall? For natural phenomena, the question might be how much do you think that Bill knows about the parts that make up thunder and lightning storms and how those parts make thunder and lightning storms happen. For psychological phenomena, it might be how much do you think that Daniel knows about why some children are better liked than others and have more friends. And finally, for moral knowledge it might be how much do you think Mary knows about when it's wrong to ask other people's, take other people's things without asking and why that's wrong? When you do that task with adults and this is a complicated graph so go through it slowly, as seen here in figure 1, people's judgments of other's knowledge at age 35 shows the same kind of effect we found for physical traits and attributes. Look at the leftmost panel which is knowledge of artifacts and you'll see that the five and seven-year olds, which is the leftmost bar think that people will know an extraordinary amount about (how a) helicopter flies. This is judging someone else's knowledge. Older children are intermediate value, but then adults think they won't know very much at all. That's too complicated, they won't grasp it. Then if you look for the next one over which is knowledge of natural kinds, that is to say, of thunderstorm or earthquakes and things like that. You find again this inflated knowledge early on and then the knowledge gets less and less with time. The same thing is true for biology. The next panel over and for psychology, although there there tends to be somewhat more optimism about what people know at all ages. Now, moral knowledge is different. Here, there is no developmental trend. Because everyone at all ages thought that moral understanding of knowledge would be automatic does not require a whole lot of learning, except that it comes in perhaps more instinctually. This is knowledge at age 35 of others. If you ask children and adults to rate their own knowledge at age 35 in the same domains, you get essentially the same effect, except that it's more inflated. So, there's some degree of self-enhancement going on. Notice that the bar for the somewhat middle aged children it is the white bar—is higher than it was in the prior slide. So you still see the developmental effect, but the children tend to persist somewhat longer at being overoptimistic about their own future self-knowledge. Again, the moral knowledge is right at the ceiling effect. So what we see is that for judgments of ones future knowledge whether it's ones own or a peers, children are wildly overoptimistic and this can be seen as a form of intellectual arrogance. But is it really intellectual arrogance? They clearly think they'll know a great deal more at age 35 as well as at age 5, but does that have the same flavor as normal adult intellectual arrogance? And we might suggest that it does not. It seems to be perhaps something closer to intellectual exuberance. A great deal of excitement and overoptimism about where one could be, but less of a feeling of social comparison of being better than others. While there is somewhat of a small effect of rating themselves higher, the important thing to note is they rate other people very highly as well. So, we can think of this as having just a feeling of incredible knowledge potential for everyone far more than seems actually appropriate to older children and adults.

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